What happened to TIME, no not the magazine, time itself, as in seconds, minutes and hours?

When I watch the second hand move around an analog clock, everything looks normal. It ticks the same way it always has. But when I turn my attention to the minute hand and the hour hand, well, they're a different story. Obviously, I could never really see them move, and yet, today, they are definitely going faster than they used to. I mean, I can still remember when afternoons seemed to go on forever. When summer went lingered. And when school felt like it would never, ever end. Now, I glance at the clock, then glance again a moment later and an hour has passed. Or more. Whereas I once hoped for the clock to move faster, now I wish it would slow down.

My dad has a theory about this: he thinks, the older we get, the slower we sample the world around us. In other words, our eyes and other senses take in the world in a continuous way, but our brains grab only samples, much like a motion picture opens its shutter (our eyes) and projects the world onto moving film (our brains). When we're young, the brain captures samples at blinding speed, packing each and every second with gobs of information. But as we age, this sample rate slows, and since we are not noticing as much of the world around us as we used to, the world seems to move faster. To go back to the film analogy, we go from capturing every frame to every other. Sigh.

This depressing theory is on my mind because I cannot believe that three years have passed since I suffered my TBI (traumatic brain injury). THREE YEARS. More than three years, really. And well over two have passed since I first hatched plans to make an album. Ack. Worse, despite being less than busy, at least relative to my pace before I fell, I feel like I am racing against the clock more than ever. And if my dad's theory is right -- and I think it is -- I am not imagining an ever faster clock. It really is running faster, according to how I perceive it.

What to do? Work harder than ever to make every moment count, to not dwell on the bad stuff, to finish my album and start another, to do more therapy, to live MORE not LESS.

Because as the Stones so sagely pointed out -- while they were still kids, I might add -- time waits for no one and it won't wait for me.

Comments

[Dave Tutin]

Time has always fascinated me.

But first, let me say you are not doing bad with the album. It took me a couple of months under three years to make mine - and I was still pulling down big agency money that I could throw at it at that time. So don't beat yourself up. It's not as easy making a good album as many people seem to think. Writing the songs is only the start - and that's hard enough!

Now back to time.

I like your dad's theory. Another one I've always believed is that time seems to go faster as we age for this reason: to a ten year old, a year is one tenth of their entire existence and experience, whereas for a forty year old a year is only one fortieth of their experience. And so on. So in real terms a year represents an ever decreasing portion of our lives. Ask an eighty year old how fast a year goes by and they'll tell you it seems like an express train. A year decreases in perceived value (and therefore increases in speed) depending on how many of them you have under your belt.

I like this theory (and your dad's) because it captures my belief that as much as we think we've mastered the art of measuring time, it's how we perceive time that matters.

"The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity" - Bob Dylan

[Harold S]

I also agree with the view Dave describes; and, it's how we subjectively perceive time that matters as to how we feel about it. Also note that when we are totally engrossed in doing something we are too focused to notice time; you might say there is no time in those periods.